After viewing Chalmers Johnson talking about his Book "Nemesis" Have hard time voting Hillary/Bill.

[KoKo]

Sorry..but he repeats that this is a DYNASTY... Bush/Clinton/Clinton/Bush/Clinton.

Our Democracy was founded to be AGAINST KINGS AND DYNASTIES....

Johnson was on C-Span Booknotes comparing the FALL OF ROME..to the FALL OF AMERICA...over EMPIRE..

Here's some quotes from his Books. His first book was "BLOWBACK." Second was "SORROWS OF EMPIRE," and this lates is "NEMESIS" where our Empire all comes home to rot.

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The Smash of Civilizations
By Chalmers Johnson

In the months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and his senior officials spoke of preserving Iraq's "patrimony" for the Iraqi people. At a time when talking about Iraqi oil was taboo, what he meant by patrimony was exactly that -- Iraqi oil. In their "joint statement on Iraq's future" of April 8, 2003, George Bush and Tony Blair declared, "We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit."<1> In this they were true to their word. Among the few places American soldiers actually did guard during and in the wake of their invasion were oil fields and the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. But the real Iraqi patrimony, that invaluable human inheritance of thousands of years, was another matter. At a time when American pundits were warning of a future "clash of civilizations," our occupation forces were letting perhaps the greatest of all human patrimonies be looted and smashed.

There have been many dispiriting sights on TV since George Bush launched his ill-starred war on Iraq -- the pictures from Abu Ghraib, Fallujah laid waste, American soldiers kicking down the doors of private homes and pointing assault rifles at women and children. But few have reverberated historically like the looting of Baghdad's museum -- or been forgotten more quickly in this country.

Teaching the Iraqis about the Untidiness of History

In archaeological circles, Iraq is known as "the cradle of civilization," with a record of culture going back more than 7,000 years. William R. Polk, the founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, says, "It was there, in what the Greeks called Mesopotamia, that life as we know it today began: there people first began to speculate on philosophy and religion, developed concepts of international trade, made ideas of beauty into tangible forms, and, above all developed the skill of writing."<2> No other places in the Bible except for Israel have more history and prophecy associated with them than Babylonia, Shinar (Sumer), and Mesopotamia -- different names for the territory that the British around the time of World War I began to call "Iraq," using the old Arab term for the lands of the former Turkish enclave of Mesopotamia (in Greek: "between the rivers").<3> Most of the early books of Genesis are set in Iraq (see, for instance, Genesis 10:10, 11:31; also Daniel 1-4; II Kings 24).

The best-known of the civilizations that make up Iraq's cultural heritage are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids, and Muslims. On April 10, 2003, in a television address, President Bush acknowledged that the Iraqi people are "the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity."<4.> Only two days later, under the complacent eyes of the U.S. Army, the Iraqis would begin to lose that heritage in a swirl of looting and burning.

In September 2004, in one of the few self-critical reports to come out of Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication wrote: "The larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended."<5> Nowhere was this failure more apparent than in the indifference -- even the glee -- shown by Rumsfeld and his generals toward the looting on April 11 and 12, 2003, of the National Museum in Baghdad and the burning on April 14, 2003, of the National Library and Archives as well as the Library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowments. These events were, according to Paul Zimansky, a Boston University archaeologist, "the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years." Eleanor Robson of All Souls College, Oxford, said, "You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale."<6> Yet Secretary Rumsfeld compared the looting to the aftermath of a soccer game and shrugged it off with the comment that "Freedom's untidy. . . . Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."<7>

The Baghdad archaeological museum has long been regarded as perhaps the richest of all such institutions in the Middle East. It is difficult to say with precision what was lost there in those catastrophic April days in 2003 because up-to-date inventories of its holdings, many never even described in archaeological journals, were also destroyed by the looters or were incomplete thanks to conditions in Baghdad after the Gulf War of 1991. One of the best records, however partial, of its holdings is the catalog of items the museum lent in 1988 to an exhibition held in Japan's ancient capital of Nara entitled Silk Road Civilizations. But, as one museum official said to John Burns of the New York Times after the looting, "All gone, all gone. All gone in two days."<8>

more at...........
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=4710


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AMAZON WEB SITE:
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Like ancient Rome, America is saddled with an empire that is fatally undermining its republican government, argues Johnson (The Sorrows of Empire), in this bleak jeremiad. He surveys the trappings of empire: the brutal war of choice in Iraq and other foreign interventions going back decades; the militarization of space; the hundreds of overseas U.S. military bases full of "swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape." At home, the growth of an "imperial presidency," with the CIA as its "private army," has culminated in the Bush administration's resort to warrantless wiretaps, torture, a "gulag" of secret CIA prisons and an unconstitutional arrogation of "dictatorial" powers, while a corrupt Congress bows like the Roman Senate to Caesar. Retribution looms, the author warns, as the American economy, dependent on a bloated military-industrial complex and foreign borrowing, staggers toward bankruptcy, maybe a military coup. Johnson's is a biting, often effective indictment of some ugly and troubling features of America's foreign policy and domestic politics. But his doom-laden trope of empire ("the capacity for things to get worse is limitless.... the American republic may be coming to its end") seems overstated. With Bush a lame duck, not a Caesar, and his military adventures repudiated by the electorate, the Republic seems more robust than Johnson allows. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Chalmers Johnson, a patriot who pulls no punches, has emerged as our most prescient critic of American empire and its pretensions. Nemesis is his fiercest book—and his best.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism

“Nemesis, the final volume in the remarkable Blowback trilogy, completes a true patriot’s anguished and devastating critique of the militarism that threatens to destroy the United States from within. In detail and with unflinching candor, Chalmers Johnson decries the discrepancies between what America professes to be and what it has actually become—a global empire of military bases and operations; a secret government increasingly characterized by covert activities, enormous ‘black’ budgets, and near dictatorial executive power; a misguided republic that has betrayed its noblest ideals and most basic founding principals in pursuit of disastrously conceived notions of security, stability, and progress.”

—John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

“Chalmers Johnson’s voice has never been more urgently needed, and in Nemesis it rings with eloquence, clarity, and truth.”—James Carroll, author of House of War

“Nemesis is a stimulating, sweeping study in which Johnson asks a most profound strategic question: Can we maintain the global dominance we now regard as our natural right? His answer is chilling. You do not have to agree with everything Johnson says—I don't—but if you agree with even half of his policy critiques, you will still slam the book down on the table, swearing, ‘We have to change this!’”
—Joseph Cirincione, Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy, Center for American Progress

“Nemesis is a five-alarm warning about flaming militarism, burning imperial attitudes, secret armies, and executive arrogance that has torched and consumed the Constitution and brought the American Republic to death's door. Johnson shares a simple, liberating, and healing path back to worthy republicanism. But the frightening and heart-breaking details contained in Nemesis suggest that the goddess of retribution will not be so easily satisfied before ‘the right order of things’ is restored.”—Karen Kwiatkowski, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel

“Last fall a treasonous Congress gave the president license to kidnap, torture—you name it—on an imperial scale. All of us, citizens and non-citizens alike, are fair game. Kudos for not being silent, Chalmers, and for completing your revealing trilogy with undaunted courage.”—Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst; co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:xl1STVli3kMJ:www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114+Chalmers+Johnson,+Nemesis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a

[welshTerrier2]

1. from my DU journal page (a permanent fixture):

from the "Sorrows of Empire" by Chalmers Johnson:

There is plenty in the world to occupy our military radicals and empire enthusiasts for the time being. But there can be no doubt that the course on which we are launched will lead us into new versions of the Bay of Pigs and updated, speeded-up replays of Vietnam War scenarios. When such disasters occur, as they - or as-yet-unknown versions of them - certainly will, a world disgusted by the betrayal of the idealism associated with the United States will welcome them, just as most people did when the former USSR came apart. Like other empires of the past century, the United States has chosen to live not prudently, in peace and prosperity, but as a massive military power athwart an angry, resistant globe.

There is one development that could conceivably stop this process of overreaching: the people could retake control of the Congress, reform it along with the corrupted elections laws that have made it into a forum for special interests, turn it into a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies. We have a strong civil society that could, in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. At this late date, however, it is difficult to imagine how Congress, much like the Roman senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and cleansed of its endemic corruption. Failing such a reform, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."

KoKo, it is pretty much my singular vision of what is wrong with all of DU's cheerleading. I am willing to accept the idea that there are political practicalities and that we can't demand that Democrats spill the beans all at once. My absolute objection to pretty much all our candidates, however, is that they are not laying the groundwork for Americans to become receptive to the truth they need to know. We are in a war for the very survival of our country and too many are busying themselves with false goals. The nation and the empire are collapsing and it apparently is not "politic" to be the bearer of the bad news. Exactly what kind of leadership is that?

And such criticisms are called bashing. What other course makes any sense than to try to awaken the others to the dangers we face? Why don't you just leave? Why don't you just go and vote for Nader then? What are you some kind of socialist? Why are you always bashing Democrats and complaining? You're just a Hillary hater!

Well, if you see the trappings of democracy as a sham, i.e. that they give the illusion of real democracy but are merely packaging with no product in the box, those who fail to at least speak out on the dangers and the fraud are either complicit in it or need to be awakened. Frankly, I don't know what else to do. Chalmers Johnson is by far the most disturbing canary in the mine. His words are truly haunting.

Check this out too: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/cj_int/cj_int1.html

BTW, thanks for giving me the heads up on his Booknotes appearance. CSPAN2 is repeating it at 12:00 am et (i.e. midnight tonight).

[KoKo]

3. Thanks...Agree..and will check out your link...and the repeat is worth

the watch...and hope DU'ers will catch it!

We need to think very carefully about this next election and not be led. So much is in the balance. And we are ready to tip... Listening to Johnson...it's so clear how much is at stake. And...we need to wake up and be serious about it. (Not that many of us haven't had this hanging on our hearts since "selection 2000" but the times are ever more threatening the longer the Bushies have been in there. Johnson points this out so well..... Dark times...and we have so little time to try to change it.

[bonito]

2. Bookmarked

For further reading, theres always hope, maybe some will realize a spent America can't help its self much less its allies, as these things unfold there are vultures watching and waiting.

[Hippo_Tron]

4. The Bushes may be a dynasty, the Clintons are not

Besides Bill and Hillary there are no professional politicians in the Clinton family.

[Forkboy]

6. Apparently there's no professional politicians in the Bush family either

:)

[Bucky]

9. The point is that we're going back to the same nuclear family again for leaders.

That's a fault of our political system if we can't find a diverse enough body of leaders to honor the whiggish principle of rotation in office. The core idea is that politics is inherently corrupting, even for well meaning, good hearted people. You need to switch out leaders often enough so that the peoples' concerns are paramount in the machinery of state.

Electing Senator Clinton as the Big Dog's surrogate is a slap against that principle. It follows from the right wing media's talking point that without this one "royal" family the Democrats are leaderless. It's crap, but it's the crap that's selling today. I don't doubt that Mrs Clinton is a capable political leader. I agree with her on virtually every issue besides the war and her idiotic flag-burning law.

But the fact that she's a contender at all rests solely on her husband's name and his presense by her side. Most people voting for her are voting for her either because she's his wife and they want a good thing back, or because they're hopping on her bandwagon or following others who are joining the juggernaut. Either way, it's a crappy way to run a democracy.

I don't like it. I never ever will. I will work my ass off for her if she's nominated, but not a second sooner.

[welshTerrier2]

5. Watch the rerun on C-Span2 at 1:15 a.m. et

Chalmers Johnson will be on C-Span2 at 1:15 a.m. et. until 2:30 a.m. et.

[KoKo]

7. Johnson said he voted for Kerry but he would have voted for Dean

but the "media" shot Dean down because of the "scream."

He's incredible! And, I got a big laugh out of what he said...about Dean/Kerry.

[welshTerrier2]

8. I thought that was a great question to ask him.

i must say i was very surprised at his response. my attitude is very similar to his; I think we're mostly kidding ourselves with electoral politics. it truly is the opiate of the masses ... but, still, you might as well vote. maybe it will make a little difference ...

for those who missed it, set those recorders. Johnson's interview will be shown again on C-Span2 from about 5:45 a.m. et until about 7:00 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

if you haven't seen this video with Arundhati Roy, it has a very similar theme: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x16801

it's only about 7 minutes long and very worthwhile.

[KoKo]

11. On your recommendation in an earlier post I watched the Arundhati Roy

clip. It's excellent. GLOBILIZATION.....that there are so many folks all over the world waking up to the horrors of it....it's good. It will take decades for this new movement to "produce closer to home" to take effect. It's just in the bud...but OH! it's good to see!

Just like those brave souls who follow the WTO meetings and Protest against all odds of them being seen or heard. Hero's..

[calimary]

10. I was an art major. The looting of the Museum of Antiquities

makes me sick to my stomach.

For that, alone, bush should burn in Hell. That was the WORLD'S museum. Civilization's museum. Ransacked and ruined. That's ALL OF OUR HISTORY - raped and lost.

But then again, bush/cheney had other priorities. "Money trumps peace."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3121968&mesg_id=3121968

[KoKo]

12. Agree...there were a few reports here and there after the Invasion and

some on DU ...but they quickly died. How many in the "Coalition" probably sold stuff off to the "Private Global Collectors" for big bucks. And those Private Collectors hold their stuff for years...decades before anyone can ever track them down...an by that time they've sold it off and tracking the money is too hard..and they never are thrown in jail where they belong.

It was horrible what was done. Probably some of the minor antiquities are sitting on the desks or or framed in boxes on the walls of the CEO's of Blackwater, Halliburton, KB&R and the other Rapists who took our tax money to invade and plunder and steal...and rape Iraq.